We have been doing that for the past 100 years or so. When you make the rich pay, the rich go somewhere else with their money. I agree that percentage wise perhaps there are too many tax loop holes but remember that the top 2% income earners still pay the majority of the taxes in this country. More than half of the working population pays no taxes and worse yet they are eligable for earned income tax credits. ( a reward for bearing little bastards that will grow up on the government teat just like mommy and daddy )

I have been a business man for over 35 years. In all that time my company and I have never paid one cent in taxes and never will. Here's why. Every time the Fed or the state raised taxes, I raised my prices right along with them, so the only one paying those taxes has been the customer. Every single business operated this way. Taxes go up, the price of goods and services go up to match it. YOU pay the taxes, not me. If I owned a manufacturing company, when it finally got to the point where all the taxes make it impossible to sell my products at a profit I up and move my company to a foreign country where I can once again make money for me and the share holders. Taxation and regulation have driven manufacturing from this country. That's why there are no jobs and that's why our economy is in the dump. The government can not create jobs and opportunities. What the government can do is to create an environment that is conducive business growth and start up. Instead they seem hell bent on putting everyone on welfare because folks on welfare tend to vote for those politicians that hand out taxpayer money.

I love that argument. Raise taxes and the rich will move their businesses.

Fine in theory, until they ask their wives!

"Honey, we're leaving San Fran and moving to China."

Yeah right.

America's rich aren't going anywhere. Raise their taxes and make them pay their fair share. The rich will just save less. That's all.

They'll still get to drive their Bentleys. And we'll narrow the budget deficit without having to cut spending at this delicate time.

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You forget that this country is a democratic republic, not a socialist republic. It is not the governments job to control the economy. Letting the government regulate business is what got us into this whole mess in the first place. These guys are not capable of managing anything.

Ian, why do you think so many American businesses are now operating overseas?

Why do you think so many American businesses and the rich have moved their assets to foreign banks?

Even if you taxed them at 100% it would not be anywhere near enough to cover the debt.

The rich don't physically have to go anywhere, just their assets.

Your theory of taxation wipes out all incentive to create jobs, make money, build equity or for that matter do anything other than sit on your fat ass in a government paid for section 8 apartment, drink beer, smoke crack and collect food stamps. When it is more advantageous to collect welfare than to work for a living what kind of society does that create.

"The Rich" is just an abstract expression, and far too simplistic to be useful.

When you give billions to people who are insolvent and then within a matter of months they find ways to suck billions out of their companies, in full public view, you know there are going to be reactions.

Some will say it's better that they pulled all that money out, in full public view. Why? People in the class we might call (co-owners, share option holders, executives) know how to slide money sideways and slip it out of the corporation and into some slimy subsidiary in indonesia or india or indiscrimia.... then they know how to make that money slide sideways outwards once again and suddenly end up in a secret new place. Hint hint. Once the funds have been invested offshore, they become slave funds that do whatever you bid them to do, without regard to morality. Hint hint.

So, what is the answer? Is there a simple answer? Well, golly, I guess we all have to agree that some taxation is needed, and then we all have to agree it has to go grab some of the moveable grabbable liquid value that slides around the world. Hmmm.

We have been doing that for the past 100 years or so. When you make the rich pay, the rich go somewhere else with their money. I agree that percentage wise perhaps there are too many tax loop holes but remember that the top 2% income earners still pay the majority of the taxes in this country. More than half of the working population pays no taxes and worse yet they are eligable for earned income tax credits. ( a reward for bearing little bastards that will grow up on the government teat just like mommy and daddy )

I have been a business man for over 35 years. In all that time my company and I have never paid one cent in taxes and never will. Here's why. Every time the Fed or the state raised taxes, I raised my prices right along with them, so the only one paying those taxes has been the customer. Every single business operated this way. Taxes go up, the price of goods and services go up to match it. YOU pay the taxes, not me. If I owned a manufacturing company, when it finally got to the point where all the taxes make it impossible to sell my products at a profit I up and move my company to a foreign country where I can once again make money for me and the share holders. Taxation and regulation have driven manufacturing from this country. That's why there are no jobs and that's why our economy is in the dump. The government can not create jobs and opportunities. What the government can do is to create an environment that is conducive business growth and start up. Instead they seem hell bent on putting everyone on welfare because folks on welfare tend to vote for those politicians that hand out taxpayer money.

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Canada just moved its production of Lear jets to central mexico where they paid to build a tech school to train 400 workers.

Nafta allowed us to move most of our widget production to just south of the border, and now we cant even make a coat hanger here any more. NO more clothespin production in America - all gone to China. Even though hands never touched a clothespin except to maintain the machines. Rather we chip the wood and put it on our roses. Matches are next.

China knows exactly what it is doing, getting ready to hang us by our Gonads when our industrial machinery is AWOL. And the skills are in the grave.

We retained our rank thanks to decisive and politically unpopular measures to get the ballooning deficit down.

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Good on your politicians. Now your cops need to carry automatic weapons and start shooting the brats that are burning down their govt. housing and shops because they dont have enough money to buy crack this week.

Natural selection.

And no other situation speaks better about why the average law abiding American needs to own and know how to operate a few guns.

The paper said Wednesday that across the U.K. there had been 1,335 arrests since trouble started Saturday, including 768 in London and 300 in the Manchester area.

Speaking Wednesday, Cameron said it was "all too clear that we have a big problem with gangs in our country," The Guardian reported.

"When we see children as young as 12 and 13 looting and laughing, when we see the disgusting sight of an injured young man with people pretending to help him while they are robbing him, it is clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society," he added.

Senior officers have said they are also considering the possible use of plastic bullets â€” blunt-nosed projectiles designed to deal punishing blows to rioters without penetrating the skin.

Such weapons, formally called baton rounds, still are used to quell riots in Northern Ireland but have never been used by police on Britain's mainland.
The violence, the worst unrest Britain has seen since race riots set London ablaze in the 1980s, began when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in the capital's Tottenham neighborhood turned violent.

That clash has morphed into a general lawlessness in London and several other cities that police have struggled to halt.

Downing Street Blues: A History of Depression and Other Mental Afflictions in British Prime Ministers

In the book, the authors, who are mental health professionals, reviewed Prime Ministers and basically found that 75% of them had major mental illness, and about half of them exhibited signs of their illness during their time in office.